long-form story (ongoing)
“Do you recognise the bar? Any of the people?”
“No. Nobody will.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s AI. Those fakes are getting convincing.”
For a festering second she thumbs the worn-away edges of the photo like a blind nun reading erotic braille. But this woman was not blind - she had two fully functional hazel eyes which now studied the rugged crease down the centre of the image where the gelatine and ink had cracked revealing a lightening strike of white. Neither did she possess a nunnish nature; she screamed an ambitious vibrancy incongruous to her surroundings. The paper photo and its faded colours looked older than she does - which was about 32 in the right light. This wasn’t the right light. Everyone ages 5 years when they walk into The Swan & Sulphur.
“No it isn’t A.I.. It was folded up in my mum’s purse since I was little. She used to extract it & contemplate it in the mid-morning sun as she waited for her coffee to cool.”
The man, who could pass for 55 in the wrong light, slowly leaned closer until the burst capillaries around his nose were visible, and the smell of booze grew rampant, and the sound of his dry skin and polyester clothes rasped together like whispers of a thousand dying breaths.
“Are you sure about that memory, sweetheart?”
The woman’s face curdled. She narrowed her eyes, laughter lines rippling like bullwhips.
“Are you sure about yours?” She retorted.
The man laughed warmly at this, leaning back on his barstool which creaked a dirge under his weight.
“Touché.”
He gulped the finale of his beer, then hoisted the empty pint aloft. Foamy jellyfish glooped. His voiced burred:
“One more, please, Jemima, and one for my this nice lady here, if she wants one?
A man with menacing lumps under his trench coat called out with a voice that had known phlegm:
“You’d be lucky, Joe!”
“Shut up, you!” Joe called back, and laughter from a few badly-lit faces filled the pub as a sunbeam dances round an empty bottle of laudanum.
Jemima the bargirl’s plastic nails clacked on Joe’s glass as she took it, her face stabbing a sarcastic misery that could cure kindness.
The woman was clutching her photograph and gazing at an old lady in the corner on the pub who sat by a bookcase. Both her and the bookcase were covered with dust and knocked edges and red wine spills and contained knowledge nobody cared for.
“Thanks for the offer but I shouldn’t. I’m Eva, by the way.”
“Suit yourself, Eva” said Joe as a fresh pint of beer hit the unpolished brass drip tray. A foamy jellyfish was flicked from plastic nails to meet its death onto the hot sandy beach that was the sticky linoleum bar floor. Joe wondered if Jemima was like that unpolished brass drip tray - whether if someone could give her love needed then a warm heart of gleaming golden brass could blossom from under angry tarnish, or if all that was reachable was a recess of stale, festering beer.
He took a sip of the beer and looked at Eva. She seemed disappointed as she placed the photograph with care back into a plastic wallet before slipping it back into the pocket of her long, beige coat. Joe paused, breathed deeply, and said:
“Listen. You wanna hear something about memories?”
The lady looked plainly at Joe, unsure exactly what he meant.
“Sure. Why not.”
“When I was a young man - about eighteen - I had a pretty bad attitude towards people. My dad had just died - proper sob story. I was angry - part of me still is, but back then I was angry with everyone, not just the people who deserved it. Perhaps it was my upbringing, but I’ll let my biographer worry about that. Anyway, one day I was in town alone, and I saw this bicycle propped up against a lamppost. Nice bike too - all black, expensive looking, the type a tough teenager like me would ride, y’know? With the knees up high and the handlebar high like a Harley Davidson? Haha. So as I’m looking at the bike, I notice there’s no lock. And I think to myself: ‘if any fucker is dumb enough to leave a nice bike like that unlocked, they deserve to lose it.’ It’s a nasty thought, I know, but that’s how I felt back then.”
Eva glanced at the floor. Joe took a swig of his pint and put it firmly back on the wooden part of the bar. The varnish on the wood was wearing away and the soggy area around his glass had turned milky like the eye of a dead deer.
“So I decided I’m gonna steal the bike. First I go near it and pretend to tie my shoe, y’know? Glance around…check the bike… check if anyone’s watching etc. I remember my heart pounding in my chest. And when I thought the time was right, I went for it.”
Joe’s eyes were intense now as he asked Eva -
“Have you ever stolen anything?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
“I thought so; if you don’t mind my saying, you don’t look the sort.”
“Maybe not. But maybe I’m full of surprises.”
“Surprises eh? Haha! Funny you should mention surprises. In that part of town where the bike was, unbeknownst to me, there had recently been a few robberies and bikes stolen, and the people who lived round there were getting pissed off. And a couple of guys decided to something about it. So they got a bike - a nice one, a very steal-able one, and they set about making some alterations to it. First, they removed the saddle from the top of the metal shaft it sits on, and cut a whole through the middle of it. It was a black saddle, so no one would notice. Then they fixed up a spring system, so when nobody was touching the bike, it all looked normal, but when you put enough weight on the saddle, the springs south contract, and the saddle would suddenly jerk straight down, and the top four inches that steel bar would snap straight through that hole in the middle of the saddle.”
Eva winced at this point as Joe, for dramatic effect, forced his middle finger through the fingers slit on his other hand.
“Now bearing in mind that I’ve always been a heavy, strong lad, and that in those days, the fashion was to wear your jeans around the bottom bit of your arse, when I jumped on that bike that day as an angry arrogant kid, and four inched of steel tore its way through my boxers followed by the most tender of soft tissue, let’s just say I wasn’t gonna walk away easily. People heard my scream and came looking, I don’t know how many were in on the trap, but word spread quickly, and pretty soon most of the community came out their houses and shops to shout abuse at me. All this while I was writhing on the pavement. My face was well-known before someone took pity on me and called an ambulance.”
Eva’s face had formed an indescribable expression which, for a moment, blended perfectly with the Swan & Sulphur.
“That’s a horrible story. Why are you telling me this?”
“Because that memory is the most real thing I have. Of course, that day changed changed my life: the surgeries I needed which put my mother in debt, how my relationship with her changed, being humbled like that in front of all those people, the feeling that every new person I met knew that most intimate of secrets about me, receiving incredible care from doctors and nurses at a time when I needed love and care more than anything. Those thing fundamentally changed who I am. But it’s none of those things why I’m telling you this now. Damage like that isn’t easily fixed. Every time I go to the toilet, or even sit on this barstool, the pain that sparks through the centre of me, from arsehole to brain, has dragged me back to that day and everything it caused. It forms a part of me in a way I’m not sure you can understand.”
The two held eye contact and the all the birds in the world held their song.
“You think I’m one of them, don’t you?”
For a moment, Joe’s upper lip cringed unconsciously as if smelling roadkill.
“I don’t know. But I know that memory has become part of me. It can’t be taken out or replaced. It’s connected to my cells and my nerves. It’s truly a part of me.”
Eva paused. Her eyes slowly closed. A wry smile descended on her face.
“Thank you for sharing your memories with me, Joe.”
END OF CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
A boy of 18 pressed one hand onto the seat of his jeans, under which padding and bandaging was damp with blood, under which stitches swam through the soft tissue of his anus. The boy was wearing a Manchester United football shirt, whose badly designed and garish synthetic red excuse for clothing fondled the bulge of the swelling colostomy bag beneath it. The boy’s head was bowed with face crumpled in pain, although not from finally realising the tragedy of his choice of football team.
His lips at first were bitten to ease the pain, then pursed to vent a stabbing breath, then finally whispered:
“Come on, Joe. You’ve got this.”
Joe’s other hand was gripping the bark of an oak tree which was had grown alone on the side of a public park. The tree had grown over a metre thick and taller than any other tree nearby, which made it look a tad incongruous. The only person who wasn’t surprised by the flourishing oak was Jerry Wendell, because Jerry knew where the body was buried. More recently, the oak had been struck by lightening, the force of which had gouged an entire blackened pie-slice quarter of the trunk to the floor. The council then underpaid a tree surgeon who brutally pollarded what remained of the oak into a vagabond Venus de Milo. A second quarter of the tree, next to the giant pie-slice gouge, then became infected with fungus which gnawed through the trunk, leaving that quarter with mottled, decaying bark and wood into which bugs now burrowed. A third quarter - the north side - was in the forced embrace of ivy and moss, fumbling uninvited into all the oak’s gropeable crevasses. It looked a tortured abstraction of its past self. On the fourth quarter, however, the tree clung to life, and breaking through the gnarled crocodile skin bark of the dilapidated oak, two new branches had formed. The branches unfurled into twigs, which unfurled into oak leaves, which now gently shielded the grimacing face of the 18-year-old Joe from the midday sun.
“Come on, Joe. You’ve got this.” He whispered again, mining just enough mettle to set off on the last part of his journey to the park bench.
Checking that nobody was watching him, the boy half-waddled to the bench, trying to move in the least embarrassing and least agonising steps possible.
Joe finally reached his destination - a steel bench painted toxic grape next to a shabby children’s playground. The steel was cold even in the midday sun, and flecks of toxic grape adorned the mud underfoot. As he lowered himself slowly down, gauze ripped hairs from his nethers before bandages, damp with blood, were sandwiched between skin and cold, toxic grape steel. His face was an omelette of pain and focus.
Joe controlled his breathing and looked through newly-humbled eyes at the playground to his right. He remembered times as a child his mother had took him there. He remembered times as a teenager when he and his friends had smoked and thrown litter. The litter was later picked up by a silent army of dog walkers and pensioners impregnated with a bioluminescence in defiance of devouring darkness. But there are no novels written about them, so Joe didn’t understand that yet.
After a few minutes, from the other side of the playground, a firework girl of about six sprinted from a side path towards the playground. She shrieked joyful fizzing and pops. She was soon followed by two trudging zombies. The firework girl whooshed through the toxic-melon playground gate and towards her favourite playground amusement - the zipline. The multicoloured lights in the heels of her shoes flickered as she hopped across muddy playground puddles to the zipline seat, hanging, discarded by the previous child, in the centre of the bowing cable. She wrestled with the zipline seat, dragging it through mud and battled balance to ascend the battered astroturf ramp. Finally, she jumped on and sped away, exploding with shimmering colour and whooping sirens and spins of Dopplar-ed glee. A great ‘clack’ sounded as the zipline hit the end, and back she whirled - a Catherine wheel of jubilant yips. The neon sparkles and blissful echoes glistened off the zombies’ clammy, slackened faces and overcast eyes and languid limbs as they traipsed by the firework show. The firework girl rocketed five rides of joyful rush before the zombies drudged out a stagnant groan:
“Josie, c’mon, we gotta get going.”
The firework girl had just finished a her fifth ride, so calls back “OK!” and began whizzing back to the zombies. After a few paces, however, she stopped, spun round, and sprinted back to the zipline, shouting:
“I’m just going to set it up for the next person!”
The firework girl hopped across muddy playground puddles then wrestled the zipline seat back to the astroturf ramp. She battled balance and delicately placed the zipline seat at the starting position, ready for the next child to use immediately without them having to struggle. The zombies were unaware or unimpressed with what she is doing, and instead of commenting on the selfless act, they just gurned back an angry drone of:
“Josie!?”
Joe watched this joyful firework girl and her compassionate care for others. He didn’t know this would be the lush punch that finally fractured his will. Joe had built a boat and learnt to roll with the bullish waves that pounded him. He had not yet cried from the bicycle ordeal, nor from myriad other troubles that had pummelled the boat’s hull. He had become a better sailor, never being blind-sided by wave that could crush him, but with each trouble, the ocean had swollen and surged with greater and greater rage. Tears started. He tried to stop them but had nothing left to hold them back - neither pride nor embarrassment. Tears for the fear he felt, for the swelling colostomy bag penetrating him, tears for the love and gentle care the nurses had showed, and for the death of his father, tears for simply being, all came at once. He cried as a dinghy with a hole is consumed. He sank down and was swallowed into the ocean. And when he thought there are no tears left, he cried some more. Alone he wept as bloodied bandages hardened, and the sting of the cold, toxic-grape steel crept inside.
END OF CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
The antique metal analogue clock with penises for hands ticked 9:52 on the wall of the Swan & Sulphur. Joe finished his pint. Jellyfish glooped. He took his coat from a rusty nail hammered half-way into an oak beam. Nibble nibble. Nobody knew that it was the same rusty nail which had killed a man. When he flailed against it in a drunken rage, skin flushing with ripe capillaries, the rusty nail gouged his skin and dosed him with tetanus. A week later, he was dead. Before that day and after it, the rusty nail had held coats dutifully, like the butler is Agatha Christie novel whose only indiscretion in 60 years of service was murder.
“Thanks, Jemima.” Joe called out merrily.
Jemima echoed back a ‘see you later’ in a solitary grunted syllable, never looking up from her phone. A peal of churchbell goodbyes rang around the pub.
The Swan & Sulphur was 300 years old, so the exit doorframe was low. Hanging above the door was an oil painting of a duck - a bad joke which further grazed the nerves of those tall enough to graze their heads as the walked out. Joe opened the door and stooped his head in a gesture as automatic as closing your eyes for a sneeze. As he left, he turned his coat collar up against the chilpy smack of the October evening wind. The darkness suckled at the breast, feeding on the lush equilibrium of the day. The coat collar encased his ears, turning the innocent sound of an unshaven cheek on wool into a rasping, nauseating gasp for breath.
The Swan & Sulphur sat at the end of a highstreet in a town that had once had industry, had once had a culture, but now sat stagnant, swallowed at slowly digested by a city whose name was never spoken with any true passion or zeal, and had may as well be flotsam lost on the currents of time. The Swan & Sulphur had witnessed it all - a bystander witnessing a some unspeakable crime over a period of centuries, but too frozen to do anything.
Outside the Swan & Sulphur was a throbbing lake of ancient, uneven cobblestones, which had stolen the dignity of many an unsure foot with an unsober brain. Every one of the stones were knobbled in their own unique way, but had all been smoothed and rounded over time, resembling a giant box of shiny, grey chocolates in a box. Inbetween the stones nestled a stratigraphy of detritus from when the pub and cobblestones were constructed, 300 years ago. The organic matter began with more leaves and animal dung and straw from when farms still existed around the area. Further up the cross-section, more carbon appeared. The pollen levels showed the trees and plants which were once prevalent were now limited of entirely gone. The smallest fragments and molecules marked a plethora of inventions and epochs - all visible with the right equipment: borosilicate glass; vulcanised rubber; lead in petrol; synthetic filter tips in cigarettes; atoms of platinum, palladium and rhodium from catalytic converters; then microplastics began to punctuate the layers of mud and debris. In the most recent layer, a new kind of microscopic entity began appearing. If you knew what to look for, you could find little crumbs of silica and plastic which were more complex than the dust particles that now embraced them. Some were blades that mimicked the wings of the tiniest insects, some were fragments of tiny machines and atomic circuit boards. All were now inert and held no useful information alone, but all had been part of the various swarms of nanobots that all had heard about, but nobody saw.
Although newspapers reported that these nanobot swarms were ubiquitous, people never really noticed them. Of course, people noticed that the number of spiders had increased and insects had increased. Joe recalled reading somewhere that the numbers of some insect-catching birds had plummeted, like swifts, pied flycatchers, swallows, and house sparrows. Indigestible nanobots had been found inside them, strangling little necessary tubes. Then the real insects flourished and ruined crops and spread disease. That was a few years ago and some laws were changed. Since then he hadn’t heard much about struggling bird population, so he assumed it had been sorted. As for the swarms of nanobots, they were still simply not noticeable, unless you knew where to look. He wondered if they’d disappeared or got smarter or smaller or something.
Joe walked down the abandoned highstreet. All building motionless in the bitter breeze and yet flowing in familiarity. Each closed shop shutter nodded a welcome, every brick mouthed Joe’s name, the bollards saluted him, the signposts knew his face, the asphalt detected his presence.
After walking for fifty metres down the highstreet, Joe passes down a side alley with spray-paint jewellery and urine perfume. It lead to a small field. Either side, the ghosts of goalposts hovered in the darkness - the gallows on Sunday League dreams. A tad inebriated, Joe stumbled slightly on bits of the uneven football pitch as he crossed.
The first stumble was on a deep gouge made by a gritted-teeth slide tackle, the maker of which was a forty-year-old accountant trying to escape the news of his father’s cancer. The second stumble was on clod torn from the ground by a teenage boy trying too hard to impress his parents on the sidelines. His parents watched on immeasurably proud of him yet crippled by their inability to show it.
The third stumble was on a ridge formed by girl’s knee hitting the ground. Her knee was twisting as it landed, so the impact made a slight tear in her cartilage which she would carry with her forevermore, twinging as she walked the stairs to her graduation, and carried by her son to bed.
Across the field was a playground, and beyond that was the path to Joe’s house. The playground equipment lay still. The toxic mango climbing frame dreamt of children’s joyful screams. The zipline was sleeping in the middle of its wire. As he approached the playground, Joe saw the zipline and altered his path towards the toxic blueberry playground gate. He walked through the gate, towards the zipline, and, struggling with the mud, dragged the zipline seat towards the ramp. Up the worn astroturf ramp he went and balanced the zipline carefully at the top so the next person didn’t have to struggle.
Stepping stiffly down from the ramp, Joe sat on the toxic lime steel bench next to the zipline. The sharp sting of cold stabbed up his anus, Joe grimaced. He took a breath, and then looked up at the zipline seat. The wind had died down now and the vulcanised rubber seat was swaying gently in the night sky. The chain made only the gentlest squeaks, like the snores of a bunny. Joe smiled. He lost himself in his thoughts with the warm haze of the alcohol.
The moon and stars provided just enough light to see the coloured things around him. His eyes drifted like dandelion seeds on the breeze from the toxic banana climbing frame to the toxic blueberry slide, to the toxic orange bin. Looking down, he saw an empty Monster Munch packet on the floor. He bend over and grabbed it. The sharp crinkle of the plastic packet was the only sound that split the night’s veil. He put the rubbish in his pocket as his head drifted gently to the left and his eyes fell to the side to the bench and the beige mass on the floor beyond it. Lost in a miasma of tipsy musing, Joe stared at the beige mass for a while, unable to identify it. Somewhere in the world, a battered jukebox changed song, and Joe froze stiff.
Joe’s cold and shaking fingers frantically fumbled for his phone. He shuffled along the bench, towards the beige mass, desperately scrambling for the torch function. Finally, as he reached the end of the bench, the torch light came on. Joe’s pupils had dilated in the darkness, so the colours that burst through were a vibrant and saturated toxic lime from the bench, a toxic cranberry of blood, and a deep gold of Eva’s hair. The colours screamed against the neutral beige of her coat, and the white of her skin.
END OF CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
Next to a dusty, antique bookshelf, sat a dusty antique woman. Her skin told of French perfume & her breath told of steak & kidney pie. The tealight on the old lady’s table reflected fire in each of her bits of jewellery. The jewellery she wore included:
-Two engagement rings with different men’s names.
-A silver ring with an amber stone containing an fossilised ant.
-Silver earrings bought from a nun behind a brothel.
-A vintage 18 carat Tiffany pendant paired with a $5 chain from an Arkansas gas station.
Her arthritic hands had knuckles like the bulbous burls of a pollarded oak tree, so she could no longer take the rings off, not that she ever wanted to; they were memories that were truly a part of her now. Each time she sipped her Dubonnet & bitter lemon from a dimpled pint mug, the candlelight danced off the ruddy galls of each knuckle, and the deep folds of her puckering red-lipsticked mouth, and the shiny metals & gems that adorned her and adored her. She was an ocean wave making spume bubbles, each one reflecting a sunset and bursting the gentle pop of a story soon to be forgotten. She could pass for 85 in this dim corner of the Swan & Sulphur - a setting incongruous to the magnificence she exuded by the positioning of her shoulders, or the fire twinkling in her eye.
A young blonde lady in a beige coat approached the table, saying “Excuse me?”
As if awoken from a dream, the old lady gave a slight shake, sending her silver earrings into a religious fervour of light.
“Hello, my dear, how can I help you?”
Her eyes never quite latched onto the eyes of the young woman. Even when they made direct contact, they seemed to look slightly through the surface of the pond, and into an algae-cloaked newts of a memory.
“Hi, I’m Eva. Sorry to interrupt.”
“Not at all, dear. I’m Jennifer. How can I help you?”
“I was wondering if you recognised anyone anyone or anything from this photograph?”
“Oh. That sounds exciting. Let’s have a look.”
Jennifer’s voice, despite her age, held a sweet alacrity of kittens born in fly-tipped roll of linoleum.
She took the photo carefully from Eva in both arthritic hands, and rested enflamed knuckles along its edge. While studying the image, Jennifer’s head made small, unconscious tilting movements, and her voice made delicate chirps and warbles as if a nest of fledglings were nestled in her throat.
“They look lovely people, dear. I like the gentleman’s smile. Some of those haircuts take me back.”
She rested a gnarled finger on the face of a young woman and said cheekily
“I think I had the same cut as her in 90s”
She rocked towards Eva and let out a warm chuckle.
“That’s my mother” said Eva with an unflinching smile.
“Ah yes, I can see the resemblance. She was a beautiful lady!” Said Jennifer, rocking once more with the coy glint of a child saying a rude word.
“Other than that, though, I’m afraid I can’t tell you much. Were they local to these parts?”
“Yes, they were for a while. Do you know the place they’re in. I thought it might be a bar from around here.”
“I can’t say that I do, I’m afraid. The memory’s not what it used to be but I tend to remember places quite well.
Jennifer’s voice held a genuine disappointment. She let her eyes flow one last time around the image. She was about to give it back when she adjusted her hand slightly, removing a rosy oak-burl knuckle from the edge of the photo, which revealed a tiny sliver of a man’s face. Only one eye and a corner of a smile were visible. Jennifer peered at the face in the candlelight before letting out a fricative warble of glee.
“That’s James Bentham!”
A knobbled finger shot to his face as a small globule of spittle shot towards the candle, meetings demise with a meek fizzle on the wick of destiny.
“Goodness me, I haven’t seen him in donkey’s years but I’d remember those devilish eyes anywhere.
Eve’s face was a polytunnel of strawberries
“Who’s that?”
“Oh James was great fun but an utter toe-rag at times. Jameses tend to be a bit like that, as I’m sure a pretty girl like you will’ve found out!”
She rocked with a zesty chirrup towards Eva.
“I’ve got a feeling he tried to snog me at some new years eve party when I my guard was down - naughty little bugger that he was, and I suspect still is! If memory serves, I was a good 20 years older than him and married at the time, not that he cared for things like that, the little toe-rag.”
The candlelight danced off every shiny part of Jennifer as she whooping laughed.
“He had a spirit of freedom about his that didn’t fit well with formalities or traditions, let’s say. Always seemed to be getting fired after arguments with bosses. Goodness me, I haven’t thought about him in yonks. I’d love to see him again.”
“I’m guessing you’d have no idea where he’s living now?”
Eva asked with the expectation of a no.
“Not a clue, I’m afraid. If memory serves, the little bugger moved away after stepping on the wrong person’s toes, if you catch my drift. As for when he scurried off to, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Eva’s face smiled like a cloud laden with hail.
“That’s no trouble at all. You’ve been a great help. Thank you.”
“Oh, no trouble dear, I enjoyed thinking about James again. If you do get in touch with him, do mention my name - Jennifer Bramley, he’ll have known me as. Please tell him I’m here most nights.”
“I will do. I must get going now. I need to meet someone. Thank you for your help.”
“OK. See you again, I hope.”
Eva pocketed the photograph, in its plastic wallet once more and. As she walked past Joe towards the exit, the two shared a wary glance. The antique metal analogue clock with penises for hands ticked 9:21 on the wall of the Swan & Sulphur as Eva ducked out of the exit, over ancient cobblestones, and into the silent embrace of night.
END OF CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FOUR
“By the bench?”
The Swan & Sulphur was juicy with the buzzing miasma of gossip. Early evening sunbeams pierced blindingly through the windows like lasers pointed on a cage of mice in some godforsaken mad scientist’s lab.
“Yeah. I’d popped in to have a sit down. I do that most evenings when I walk home - have a look at the stars, have a think y’know? Then I glance down to the side, and there she was.”
A wall of organs clamoured around Joe seeking sensation to filter and digest. It’s hard to pin down the difference in a room sodden with big news, but every human knows the palpable weight of such an environment. Maybe the people talk subtly quieter or stand a little more still like Palaeolithic hunters crouching and poised, hyperaware of rustling in the bushes. Everyone near Joe at the end of the bar was listening for those rustles today. Every pore on their skin was yearning for that warm honey of gossip. Of course, all the parishioners in congregated for the sermon followed the codes of respect for the dead, and the obligatory air of nonchalance required to maintain the image of propriety, but in truth every pulsating gland and quivering sinew, and stand-on-end hair was screaming a silent electric chorus of “TELL. US. EVERYTHING.”
“So, did you check her pulse n that?”
“Well, I did as it happens, but I needn’t’ve bothered - not with the state she was in.”
At this comment, the clamouring wall of organs became still. All the eyes unfocused from Joe and drifted somewhere in the middle distance as they all envisioned what this meant. A low and grave “hmmm” ejected from larynx soggy with the first beer of the day. Lips pursed. The horrifying stillness only proven as time unpaused by fizzy and foamy beers erupting in their hands, and the burning white dust particles floating through the sunbeams like ghosts momentarily screaming in the brilliant light of exorcism, then banished to some ethereal plane.
“That’s horrible, mate. Crazy to think but two days back I was sat with my daughter on that bench eating Monster Munch. Then less than 48 hours later there’s a murder by it.”
“Jesus. Scary innit?” A mouth in the wall organs responded.
“Hmmm. What did the police say, Joe?”
The scar tissue inside Joe’s anus sent snakefangs to his brain.
“Not much to be honest with you. I rang them shaking like a leaf, they got me to check her pulse n that. They sent an ambulance, pronounced her dead, which I could’ve done for them, then the police asked me if I knew her. I said she’d been in the pub that night. First time I’d seen her, and last time too so it turns out, alive at least. I told them about the photo she was asking people about, which most of you saw as well, right?”
“Yeah.” Came the response from all except one - a man, with the paunch and lips of pregnant nun and the voice of piss on fresh snow, who responded:
“I didn’t. I weren’t here yesterday. What was the photograph about?”
The wall of organs worked as one to piece together the story in overlapping scattergun bursts:
“She came in with this old photograph.”
“An old paper one. Non-digital, like.”
“Just after nine she came in.”
“From about the nineties wasn’t it? The photo?”
“Starts asking round everyone if we knew them.”
“The couple in the photo.”
“First time she’s been here.”
“In their thirties would they have been?”
“Asked each of us, she did.”
“Did she say they were her parents?”
“No one knew them, I think?”
“Man and a woman. Normal-looking.”
“Joe says he thinks the pic was A.I.”
“Didn’t recognise the place either.”
“Why do you think that, Joe?”
“She left around nine-thirty.”
“Something didn’t seem to add up.”
“They looked a bit like her, to be fair.”
“Spoke to Jennifer last, I think.”
“She did seem a bit weird”
“They were smiling and cheersing the camera”
“Strange to be asking about your parents though.”
“Looked like they were in a party”
“Then Joe finds her dead around 10”
The wall of organs falls silent again. A moment passes. Screaming white ghosts are exorcised in light before Joe continues the story:
“The police had those new visor things. The ones where they’re scanning your face and checking your record and using that A.I. lie-detector software.
“Yeah, I’ve heard about that.”
“Pretty scary knowing they’re testing you and know all about you, not that I’ve got a record - not since I was a teenager at least. But with a body lying next to you, it doesn’t half shake you up.”
“Yeah, I’m not surprised. You went back to the station with them?”
“Yeah, they just needed a statement saying how I knew here and where I found her, if I’d moved her, stuff like that. They asked a lot about the photo too because - and here’s the weird thing - the photograph wasn’t on her body.”
“It weren’t?!”
“Nah. I remember seeing her put it in her pocket when she left, but by the time I found her, it had gone.”
“So somebody took it?”
“Dunno. Seems like it. Doubt she lost it in that time?”
“So that picture’s pretty key then?”
“So it seems. Might be a coincidence, like, but would be a strange one if so. Nobody recognised anyone from the pic right?”
The wall of organs glanced around at each other.
“No.”
“Not me.”
“No.”
“Never seen them before.”
“Me neither”
A man with wrists that would make a watchmaker sweat spoke up:
“Hate to say it, but if she was mixed up in something that was nothing to do with us, and got taken out for asking the wrong questions, well, all I’m saying is it’s better that than some maniac going around praying on women.”
The wall of organs mumbled a discordance and slowly fractured into their own conversations and relaxing back into human form. Some even began talking about other things like politics and penises. At an opportune moment, a man with sandpaper hands and salt & pepper eyebrows shuffled over to Joe.
“How are you feeling about it all, mate?”
“I’m alright. Bit in shock, y’know?”
“I bet. Listen mate. That must’ve been a horrible thing to see. Totally natural for something like that to affect you a bit - nightmares etc. Nothing to be ashamed of there. I just wanted to say you’ve helped me out enough over the years, if you wanna go talk to a professional, don’t worry about the cost - I’ll cover it for you. Just say the word. Alright?
“That’s very generous of you, Jake. That means a lot. Right now I’m just a bit shaken, that’s all, but I’ll bear your offer in mind. It’s much appreciated, really.”
As the two shared a warm sandpaper handshake, at the other end of the bar, a sunbeam was refracting into a million beacons of life. Jennifer, as bejewelled by character as she was by shiny stones and metals shuffled over the beer-stained carpet, past the wooden beams blackened by long-ago years of tobacco smoke.
Jemima, suddenly unbridled from angst had already fetched the Dubonnet & bitter lemon and was reaching for Jennifer’s favourite glass. The dimpled pint mug sat in its own special place on the shelf, the dimples and handle ready to house the bulbous burls of Jennifer’s arthritic hands.
After presenting the drink and smiling with a reverence rarely seen, Jemima began chatting to Jennifer. Their conversation and connection seemed so natural and vital that empty-glassed regulars would not dare interrupt.
“I can’t believe something like this has happened around here. I hope you’re being careful, my dear. I know you’ve got to live your life, but I’d feel a tad worried if you’re walking around alone after dark especially after what’s just happened.”
“I am, don’t worry. I’ve got the Protectr app n that and there are cameras etc but just in case all the tech fails, I’ve got a knife in my bag. I’ll cut the fucking balls off any guy who tries to fuck with me.”
“Slice his knob off whilst you’re at it.” The laughed they shared at Jennifer’s reply was somewhere inbetween cheeky and bloodthirsty.
“Don’t worry, I will.”
“Or give me a call and I’ll cut it off for you. They’re never convict an old biddy like me.” The two laughed again and Jemima scolds her for referring to herself in such a way.
As she turned around to shuffle to her seat, a young man with pig blood under his fingernails and a pink tear tattoo by his milky eye dutifully jumped up and helped her to her table in the next room.
“If you want anything, just give me a shout.” He said, un-hooking his arm and half-bowing as he left her presence.
Joe observed her through the doorway. His view only broken when the local rag & bone man walked through a sunbeam, his back-street hair transplant momentarily illuminated in all its horror like a maimed guinea pig being cremated alive.
Joe’s barstool creaked a dirge as his anus found the pin hidden in your bed. He walked to Jennifer’s table in the side room of the Swan & Sulphur, where the grim reaper keeps her spare scythes mounted on the wall, and the spider dance with the moths, and the flagstones keep your secrets, and the tv is draped with a tapestry of the massacre of St. Ursula.
“Hello, sweetheart. How are you?”
“Joe, you utter rogue, all the better for seeing you.”
Silently, the two share a hug. Jennifer’s oak burl knuckles play the güiro on Joe’s spine. The music from the dusty speakers changed to an old classic, and the two shared a smile like disciples share hope.
“I hear you were the one who found that poor girl yesterday.”
“Yeah…yeah. It was pretty horrible to be honest.”
“I’ll bet. How are you feeling?”
“Yeah I’ll be alright. People are giving me support, which is nice.”
“Good. If you need anything. Let me know.”
“I think I’m find. I was curious though, if you don’t mind me asking, what did you speak to her about? She left as soon as you finished speaking.”
“She asked me about the photograph and if I knew the people in the party. She said one of them was her mother. I didn’t want to pry why”
“Same thing she asked everyone about, it seems. I’m guessing you didn’t recognise anyone.”
“Not at first, but then I saw James Bentham on the side. Such a pleasant surprise to think about him again.”
Joe’s head turned to the side slightly. A look of confusion formed on his face, not unlike that of one of virgins on the tapestry of the massacre of St. Ursula behind him.
“Are we talking about the same photo? The man in that photo wasn’t James Bentham.”
“Not the man in the middle, the man on the side. Just a sliver of his face was showing.”
Joe’s head dropped slightly, a frown appeared as he tried to recall the image.
“I don’t remember anyone being on the side of the photo.”
“Well I missed it at first, but then I kept looking trying to help the poor girl and then just noticed his devilish face poking round the corner. You two haven’t been in touch have you? I know you used to be friends.”
“Not for donkey’s years. Are you certain it was him?”
“My eyes aren’t what they used to be, Joe, and maybe my mind isn’t either, but that’s who I saw.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Not meaning to question you. I’m just surprised, that’s all. If Jeremy was in that photo, well, that changes things.”
“You don’t think James might be connected to what happened last night, surely?”
“I don’t think either of is think James would be capable of something like that, but I think I might need to make some calls.”
In the corner of the ceiling, a pearlescent moth wrapped in spider silk hung by a few threads under the spider. The moth spun round and round and round in a relentless pirouette of digestion as the spider watched on.